School officials say 5-year-old was used by ICE as “bait.” DHS says he was abandoned.

The Department of Homeland Security disputes a Minnesota school district’s claims that ICE agents used a 5-year-old boy as bait before taking the boy and his father into custody Wednesday.

The Columbia Heights Public School District says 5-year-old Liam Ramos was taken with his father while in their driveway after just arriving home from his preschool classroom. School officials claimed the child was used by agents to knock on the door and ask to be let in, letting officers see if anyone else was home.

As community outrage grew, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that “ICE did NOT target a child,” and said he was instead abandoned by his father. They say his father fled federal agents as they approached his vehicle, leaving the child.

DHS officials allege that the father, whom they described as an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, was taken into custody as other ICE officers stayed with the child. 

“For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended (the father),” DHS officials said.

School officials say a nearby adult on the scene offered to take the child, but ICE agents did not allow that.

Later Thursday, McLaughlin went further, calling the framing of the incident as ICE using the child as “bait,” claims made earlier by the child’s school district, were “a horrific smear.”

“Our officer’s made multiple attempts to get the alleged mother who was inside the house to take custody of her child. Officers even assured her she would NOT be taken her into custody. The alleged mother refused to accept custody of the child. The father told officers he wanted the child to remain with him,” McLaughlin said. “Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administration’s immigration enforcement.” 

An attorney for the Ramos family said they had entered the U.S. through a port of entry in 2024 using the CPB app and had requested asylum.

“Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do,” Marc Prokosch, the family’s lawyer, said of the family’s asylum claim. “So this is just cruelty.”

The Ecuadorian government said its consulate in Minneapolis contacted ICE as soon as it got word that Liam was being held, adding that it is “monitoring the situation of the child in order to safeguard their safety and well-being.”

Ella Sullivan, Liam’s teacher, described him as “kind and loving.”

“His classmates miss him,” she said. “And all I want is for him to be safe and back here.”

Columbia Heights officials say that Ramos and his family are not alone. The district says three other students have been taken by federal agents, including a 17-year-old boy who was reportedly removed from his car on his way to school, and a 10-year-old elementary schooler who was taken alongside her mother two weeks earlier.

The district says that both the child and her parents, along with Liam Ramos and his father, are now being held in a detention center in Texas.

Minnesota has become a major focus of immigration sweeps by DHS-led agencies. Greg Bovino, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official who has been the face of the crackdowns in Minneapolis and other cities, said 3,000 “of some of the most dangerous offenders” have been arrested in Minnesota in the last six weeks.

Julia Decker, policy director at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, said advocates have no way of knowing whether the government’s arrest numbers and descriptions of the people in custody are accurate.